$6 a gallon?! California reaches another gas price record. Is there any relief ahead?
ELIYAHU KAMISHER, Mercury News: "California’s average gas price topped $6 a gallon for the first time ever Tuesday, just two months after drivers were stunned to see $5 prices at the pump for the first time. And there is no sign of a decline anytime soon.
In San Jose, prices on Tuesday averaged $6.12, Oakland hit $6.13, and San Francisco and Marin counties were tied for most expensive in the region at $6.27, according to AAA. The state average jumped 30 cents in the last month — and a staggering $1.36 since the start of the year — as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine combined with surging inflation and increased fuel demand to spike gasoline prices.
On Tuesday, all 50 U.S. states crossed the $4-per-gallon mark for the first time."
Vaccine mandate struck down in court as cases climb in California prisons
WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: "An appellate court struck down a coronavirus vaccine mandate for California state prison employees April 25, siding with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over a federal health care receiver who had initiated the vaccine directive.
The newly-canceled mandate was issued last fall by a U.S. District Court judge on the recommendation of J. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver who oversees health care in California’s state prisons under a long-standing court order.
Kelso said in his recommendation that the delta variant, which was circulating at the time, presented “enormous risks” to those incarcerated in the tight quarters of the prisons.
California’s drought, relentless and inexorable, takes its toll
WILL SHUCK, Capitol Weekly: "With the rainy season come and gone, drought’s withered hand remained firmly fixed on California this month, as it has been, with few exceptions, for the last decade.
Woes pile up. Rain didn’t save us, the snowpack is all but gone, the Coastal Commission says no desalinating sea water, and urban-interface fires have already begun.
It’s almost summer in the Golden State.
Laguna Woods church shooting suspect charged with murder, attempted murder
LA Times, HANNAH FRY, LUKE MONEY, RICHARD WINTON, ANH DO: "The Orange County district attorney filed a murder charge Tuesday that could carry the death penalty against a man accused of fatally shooting one man and wounding five other people at a Taiwanese church in what authorities have characterized as an apparent political hate crime.
David Wenwei Chou, 68, of Las Vegas, is accused of shooting six people at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, which rents space at Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods.
One of the victims — John Cheng, a 52-year-old doctor — died from his wounds. Five others, ranging in age from 66 to 92, were taken to hospitals."
Anaheim corruption case expands as feds charge leader of ‘cabal’ that runs city
MICHAEL FINNEGAN and ADAM ELMAHREK, LA Times:"The former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce has been charged with lying to a mortgage lender in a growing Orange County political corruption scandal, federal authorities announced Tuesday.
In a criminal complaint, the FBI accused the chamber’s former president and chief executive Todd Ament of plotting with an unnamed political consultant to funnel chamber money into Ament’s personal bank accounts by laundering it through the consultant’s public relations firm.
The money was used to influence a bank’s decision to lend Ament more than $1.1 million to buy a sprawling $1.5-million home in Big Bear, the complaint says."
85% of California fast-food workers have experienced wage theft, study finds
ALEXANDRA YOON-HENDRICKS, SacBee: "When Alicia Lara picked up a second job and started working at the Jack in the Box in North Highlands in 2018, she regularly found herself forced to work through legally mandated breaks.
“When I needed a break I’d go to the manager but they wouldn’t give me any of my paid breaks,” Lara said through a translator. “We were understaffed, so we had to keep working.”
It’s a form of wage theft, experienced by thousands of low-paid workers in the state’s fast-food industry, according to a new survey released last week by the Service Employees International Union through its Fight for $15 and a Union campaign."
1 million Americans have died of COVID-19. Data shows California’s role in the staggering toll
The Chronicle, SUSIE NEILON: "COVID-19 has officially claimed 1 million lives in the U.S., according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The disease has killed more than 30 out of every 10,000 people in the country since the pandemic began.
Since March 2020, an average of nearly 1,250 people have officially died of COVID-19 in the U.S. every day. That count, which peaked in January 2021 with up to 4,400 deaths a day, has slowed down recently, with an average of 350 to 600 daily deaths in April and May, according to Johns Hopkins.
While this death toll is staggering, it’s almost certainly a serious undercount. Many COVID-related deaths are not officially counted as COVID, so the actual number of deaths from the disease could be several hundred thousand higher, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
FEMA turned down California county’s request for wildfire aid. Residents beg Biden for help
DALE KASLER, SacBee: "Tobi Magdison wants President Joe Biden to “keep to your promise” to the wildfire victims of El Dorado County. Candace Tyler wants to know why she and other fire victims have been overlooked by the federal government.
El Dorado County government officials released a five-minute video Tuesday in which residents plead with Biden to grant “individual assistance” to survivors of last summer’s disastrous Caldor Fire, which destroyed 1,003 homes and other buildings and burned through 221,835 acres.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, provided “fire management” funds to reimburse the state for up to 75% of its firefighting costs. But it turned down the county’s request for aid to individuals whose homes or businesses burned. The agency told Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office that while the damage was significant, it wasn’t “of such severity and magnitude to warrant the designation of individual assistance.”
Bay Area COVID cases keep swelling as pandemic persists
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "There’s no relief for Bay Area counties on the COVID-19 front, as the latest numbers from the state show new cases and hospitalizations driven by subvariants of the coronavirus continuing their steady climb.
The Bay Area reported about 42 new daily cases per 100,000 residents on Tuesday, up from 35 a week ago. Eight of the nine counties in the region are among those that have the highest infection rate in California, with San Francisco reporting 54 daily cases per 100,000 residents. Health officials say the actual number of infections is probably much higher because of people testing at home or not getting tested at all.
The rising count of Bay Area cases came on the same day that the death toll from COVID in the U.S. officially topped 1 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University."
U.S. Soccer achieves equal pay goal, splitting World Cup revenue evenly between men, women
LA Times, KEVIN BAXTER: "U.S. Soccer has agreed to separative collective bargaining agreements with its men’s and women’s national teams that will guarantee equal pay for players on both sides, likely ending the six-year legal fight between the women’s squad and the federation over salaries and working conditions.
“This is a truly historic moment,” U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone said. “These agreements have changed the game forever here in the United States and have the potential to change the game around the world.”
Under the agreements, which run through 2028, members of both national teams will be paid equally for all competitions, including their respective World Cups. For friendly games, men’s and women’s players will get identical roster bonuses and performance payments based on the outcome of the match and the world ranking of the opponent. The teams will split broadcast, partner and sponsorship revenues 50-50 as well."
California is getting a new state park — in San Joaquin Valley
The Chronicle, MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "For the first time in 13 years, California will create a new state park — where the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers meet among 200-year-old valley oaks and willows in the San Joaquin Valley near Modesto.
California State Parks will plan and develop the new park at Dos Rios Ranch, a restored floodplain on a former dairy farm about 10 miles southwest of Modesto. The state will acquire the 2,100 acres for the new park from River Partners, a Chico-based conservation group that’s spent the past decade restoring the site and will donate the property.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in his Friday revision to the state budget, shifted $5 million proposed for park acquisition to help prepare what would be California’s 280th state park."
New data shows explosive growth of homelessness in these Bay Area suburbs
The Chronicle, YOOHYUN JUNG/SARAH RAVANI/ERIN CAUGHEY: "Alameda County saw a significant jump in the number of people experiencing homelessness in 2022 compared with the number recorded in 2019, according to preliminary point-in-time (PIT) data — a federally mandated tally used to make funding and programming decisions related to homelessness.
But the increase wasn’t proportionate across the different cities within the county. While Oakland still has the highest number of people experiencing homelessness, some of the largest increases in that population since 2019 were observed in the more suburban parts of the county, including Union City, Dublin and Fremont.
Those suburban communities had relatively fewer people experiencing homelessness in prior years, especially compared with bigger cities like Oakland and Berkeley. Union City, wedged between Hayward and Fremont, recorded 106 people total in 2019. But that figure ballooned more than four times to 489 in 2022."
An old refrigerator becomes a vital gathering spot after mass shooting in Buffalo
LA Times, RUBEN VIVES: "In the fall of 2020, somebody placed an old refrigerator at Jefferson Avenue and Welker Street in Buffalo, N.Y., and plugged it into an outlet in an adjacent building.
It became a small source of pandemic relief for families in one of Buffalo’s poorest neighborhoods. Volunteers did their best to keep it stocked with donated groceries. Anybody who needed food was free to raid the fridge, or the cupboard set up beside it.
Now, in the wake of Saturday’s shooting massacre in Buffalo, the fridge has never been more important to the community."
Fate uncertain for Mariupol fighters, whom Russia labels ‘Nazis’
LA Times, PATRICK J. MCDONNELL/DAVID PIERSON: "As Russian forces continued to strike military and civilian targets across Ukraine, fears grew Wednesday over the fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol a day earlier.
Ukrainian officials say they are negotiating to exchange the beleaguered fighters for Russian prisoners of war. But Russia’s parliament is expected to take up a resolution Wednesday blocking the swap, citing the Azov regiment, a former right-wing militia absorbed into Ukraine’s military that Moscow says comprises Nazis. Troops from the regiment held out in the steel plant for weeks in a last stand against a complete Russian takeover of Mariupol.
“Nazi criminals should not be exchanged,” Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of Russia’s lower house, the Duma, said Tuesday about the Ukrainian prisoners, who are being held in a former penal colony in a Russian-controlled part of eastern Ukraine."
